Skeleton Crew

that he believed Shelburn was dead before the water had soaked through her dress and her underclothes to wet her skin. The boys were never told any of this, but Hal knew anyway. He dreamed it again and again on the long nights following his mother's death. You still have trouble gettin to sleep, little brother? Bill had asked him, and Hal supposed Bill thought all the thrashing and bad dreams had to do with their mother dying so suddenly and that was right... but only partly right. There was the guilt, the certain, deadly knowledge that he had killed his mother by winding the monkey up on that sunny after-school alternoon.

When Hal finally fell asleep, his sleep must have been deep. When he awoke, it was nearly noon. Petey was sitting cross-legged in a chair across the room, methodically eating an orange section by section and watching a game show on TV.

Hal swung his legs out of bed, feeling as if someone had punched him down into sleep.., and then punched him back out of it. His head throbbed. 'Where's your mom, Petey?' Petey glanced around. 'She and Dennis went shopping, I said I'd hang out here with you. Do you always talk in your sleep, Dad?' Hal looked at his son cautiously. 'No. What did I say?'

'I couldn't make it out. It scared me, a little.'

'Well, here I am in my right mind again,' Hal said, and managed a small grin.

Petey grinned back, and Hal felt simple love for the boy again, an emotion that was bright and strong and uncomplicated. He wondered why he had always been able to feel so good about Petey, to feel he understood Petey and could help him, and why Dennis seemed a window too dark to look through, a mystery in his ways and habits, the sort of boy he could not understand because he had never been that sort of boy. It was too easy to say that the move from California had changed Dennis, or that—His thoughts froze. The monkey. The monkey was sitting on the windowsill, cymbals poised. Hal felt his heart stop dead in his chest and then suddenly begin to gallop. His vision wavered, and his throbbing head began to ache ferociously.

It had escaped from the suitcase and now stood on the windowsill, grinning at him. Thought you got rid of me didn't you? But you've thought that before, haven't you?

Yes, he thought sickly. Yes, I have.

'Pete, did you take that monkey out of my suitcase'?' he asked, knowing the answer already. He had locked the suitcase and had put the key in his overcoat pocket.

Petey glanced at the monkey, and something—Hal thought it was unease—passed over his face.

'No,' he said. 'Mom put it there.'

'Mom did?'

'Yeah. She took it from you. She laughed.'

'Took it from me? What are you talking about?'

'You had it in bed with you. I was brushing my teeth, but Dennis saw. He laughed, too. He said you looked like a baby with a teddy bear.' Hal looked at the monkey. His mouth was too dry to swallow. He'd had it in bed with him? In bed? That loathsome fur against his cheek, maybe against his mouth, those glaring eyes staring into his sleeping face, those grinning teeth near his neck? On his neck? Dear God.

He turned abruptly and went to the closet. The Samsonite was there, still locked.

The key was still in his overcoat pocket.

Behind him. the TV snapped off. He came out of the closet slowly. Peter was looking at him soberly. 'Daddy, I don't like that monkey,' he said, his voice almost too low to hear.

'Nor do I,' Hal said.

Petey looked at him closely, to see if he was joking, and saw that he was not. He came to his father and hugged him tight. Hal could feet him trembling.

Petey spoke into his ear then, very rapidly, as if afraid he might not have courage enough to say it again... or that the monkey might overhear.

'It's like it looks at you. Like it looks at you no matter where you are in the room.

And if you go into the other room, it's like it's looking through the wall at you. I kept feeling like it... like it wanted me for something.' Petey shuddered. Hal held him tight.

'Like it wanted you to wind it up,' Hal said.

Pete nodded violently. 'It isn't really broken, is it, Dad?'

'Sometimes it is,' Hal said, looking over his son's shoulder at the monkey. 'But sometimes it still works.'

'I kept wanting to go over there and wind it up. It was so quiet, and I thought, I can't, it'll wake up Daddy, but I still wanted to, and I went over and I... I touched it and I hate the way it feels... but I liked it, too... and it was like it was saying, Wind me up, Petey, we'll play, your father isn't going to wake up, he's never going to wake up at all, wind me up, wind me up...' The boy suddenly burst into tears.

'It's bad. I know it is. There's something wrong with it. Can't we throw it out, Daddy? Please?' The monkey grinned its endless grin at Hal. He could feel Petey's tears between them, Late-morning sun glinted off the monkey's brass cymbals—the light reflected upward and put sun streaks on the motel's plain white stucco ceiling.

'What time did your mother think she and Dennis would be back, Petey?'

'Around one.' He swiped at his red eyes with his shirt sleeve, looking embarrassed at his tears. But he wouldn't look at the monkey. 'I turned on the TV,' he whispered. 'And I turned it up loud.'

'That was all right, Petey.' How would it have happened? Hal wondered. Heart attack? An embolism, like my mother? What? It doesn't really matter, does it?

And on the heels of that, another, colder thought' Get rid of it, he, says. Throw it out. But can it be gotten rid of? Ever?

The monkey grinned mockingly at him, its cymbals held a foot apart. Did it suddenly come to life on the night